Idea: This has been brought up before and there are some half-baked options out there (Autodesk Viewer, TrueView, AutoCAD Object Enabler). We are in need of a desktop/mobile viewer that can markup and pull actual dimensions (and include things like apparent intersections) for Advance Steel generated shop drawings. Ideally, this viewer would be able to be accessed from a tablet or other site/shop device. Our shop foreman and site crews would like to be able to pull reliable dimensions. Unfortunately, in order to have our shop foreman access the drawings and pull dimensions we have broken down and gotten him a full AS license - $2K seems like a lot of money to just pull some dimensions...
Potential Solution: It would seem that the web version of AutoCAD Mobile would be perfect for this. Unfortunately, it appears to lack the object enabler for Advance Steel (currently trying to view shop drawings generated from Advance Steel in AutoCAD Mobile just shows a blank sheet). In a perfect world, if the object enabler were added to AutoCAD mobile it would be great to have Advance Steel dimension capabilities - basically the dimensions need to recognize what scale the Advance Steel objects were detailed at and scale accordingly. I would happily pay $100/year/user for this ability. Autodesk - are you listening: you could make additional $$$ from this. Maybe that will get their attention...
Previously Attempted Solutions: These haven't worked out for one reason or another.
- The Autodesk Online Viewer: displays the items, but the dimensioning abilities are lacking (not able to do apparent intersections or other more complicated dimension styles). Also - scaling is an issue as all dimensions come in paper space. Scaling is available but it is a manual process and cumbersome - plus I don't really trust our shop/site guys to get that correct every time...
- Autodesk TrueView with Advance Steel object enabler: Shows the items but pulling dimensions need to be scaled manually. Also - only available on desktop.
- Base AutoCAD with Advance Steel object enabler: Shows the items and they can be dimensioned (have to use a properly scaled dimension style). This is probably the closest to what we are looking for - however, it is not mobile and the cost is almost as much as a standalone Advance Steel license...
